Jeremy Paxman has blasted the exclusion of a large number of British citizens from the vote about the union's future. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Jeremy Paxman believes it is a scandal that British citizens not living in Scotland are denied a vote in Thursday's independence referendum.

Resentment of Westminster politics, which is driving the yes campaign, also exists south of the border, he said, but many people in the union do not get a say on its future.

Writing for the Telegraph, the former Newsnight presenter said: "The real scandal – in which almost the whole English establishment has been complicit – has been the exclusion of half of the union from a decision on its future.

"The fate of this supposed relationship of equals is to be determined solely by those who find themselves living on one side of a border that we have been told for generations no longer really matters."

Paxman added: "There are plenty of union citizens in Birmingham, Builth Wells and Bury St Edmunds who think the Westminster parliament is remote and unrepresentative. Some of them believe that it is not just unattractive but also absurd. They're just not being offered a chance to say so."

Paxman criticised the "last-minute, panic-stricken visits" made by David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, adding that the English response had been "self-important" and "embarrassing".

"The trend in the modern world is towards an erosion of national borders. If it turns out the Scots really do want to create a new one, then let's have a proper frontier, with passport controls and barbed wire and Alsatian dogs and watchtowers on the banks of the Tweed."

Paxman has previously claimed that the nationalist campaign in Scotland is being driven by a hatred of England. In an interview on BBC Radio 4's Saturday Live he said: "Increasingly, since there is now such a head of steam in Scotland for hating the English, I describe myself as English, although I am in fact one quarter Scottish. It's interesting, isn't it, that in this union of supposed equals, only one side gets to vote on whether the union continues."

At the time, a spokesman for the yes campaign branded Paxman's comments "mad as ever".